The Overlooked Heroes of WoW – Unconventional Ways to Level

Wow has reached an age where a lot of players have tried almost everything, we have plenty of alts of all classes, we know the ins and outs of leveling and generally have extrapolated enough knowledge about the game to get around smoothly.

But the WoW-era we’re in currently has also made leveling not just more linear, but also more efficient – in my opinion too efficient. Killing mobs, completing quests, even picking a flower, will award you xp in generous amounts. Don’t be surprised if you out-level the zone you’re in, before you’ve even completed the main storyline. That’s why this also is the best time to really try something new, something unconventional, something that will make you rethink how you play the game, re-analyse the challenges that come your way and see WoW from a new angle.

My own little challenge, Joy the Nerfed Hunter is an attempt of just that – self-nerfing to the extent it’s harder to level, that I can’t always take the easy choices and most of all, I wanted to learn to play a hunter and experience the true strengths of this class. But I am in no way unique, nor is my not-so-clear-cut challenge original.

So here I bring to you, the players that challenge the cookie-cutter-whatever, that think outside the WoW-box, that I find a great inspiration and maybe they can inspire you too. They don’t come across as the obvious WoW hero, they “lack” a long list of raid and arena achievements, they don’t seem to be too bothered about the straight and paved road of leveling, instead they aim for the uncharted and rocky pathway.

We’re starting back in vanilla WoW, and the player behind who became Jumba the Naked Troll, was already getting bored and figured he could make the game interesting again by … well, by being naked.

Still wearing his underpants, he is not completely naked... you know.

“As it stands right now the only armor I will wear are gloves and shoes because not even total badasses wander around without shoes on.”

Jumba therefore kept shoes and gloves on, but would go on for the next 59 levels without pants. He made “The Naked Troll Project” to document the leveling and even made a short video that shows the exact moment of dinging 60. It took him 14 days and 10 hours of /played to reach level 60, and when he hit the mark, he wasn’t sure where he wanted to go next, especially as not everyone thinks pantsless hunters are jolly good news.

On Saturday, October 14, 2006 Jumba posts “Operation Tinfoil Armor” discussing the possibilities of getting into a raid while still obeying his own rule of nakedness. As far as I understood, he managed to get into raids wearing either lvl 60 broken armor or low level white armor with no stats, that gave the impression that he was wearing something useful.

The trend spread and more people began leveling naked alts of all classes, fx Gutrot the warrior who put down his weapons and leveled without anything, except, opposite Jumba, covering up his behind with a loincloth.
Later during The Burning Crusade we began seeing new ways of pulling off similar feats as the naked trolls, fx Noor the Pacifist who’s up next.

Being a pacifist for Noor means that she refuses to kill mobs and other players, or at least tries her best to avoid it. Her allowance includes undeads, demons and mechanical targets, but killing everyone else is against the deal.

This post is focused on the leveling sides of unconventional gameplay, so Noor’s ways sound absolutely ludicrous given the time of The Burning Crusade expansion. How on earth was this even possible in a world where everyone seems to be at war with everyone?

Well, Noor comes in two versions, the more obvious class for a pacifist play style, an undead priest named Reinisch, which opened up for an even harder option, the gnome rogue Noor.

“As a rogue is a sort of “spy” class, I Googled for a pacifist spy and found Noor Inayat Khan, a woman who was also executed by the Nazis for aiding the French resistance, so I named my rogue after her. She was the daughter of a well-known pacifist in India.”

Noor lvl 80 anno 2011

By using cunning engineering devices, such as target dummies, she was able to complete some quests that would otherwise force her into battle, despite her fate as a rogue making this a bit of a contradiction.

She quickly found herself stuck around the lower twenties and had to think of new ways to get xp other than exploration and non- aggressive quests, which quickly became a depleted source. Daily battlground quests were the answer, and while Reinisch the undead priest could easily heal his way through this, Noor the gnome rogue had to find another solution.

“In battlegrounds, my rogue will throw bombs to interrupt flag captures and stun people and may even accidentally kill players low in health or nearby critters”

Noor has showed us the limits of this type of leveling, as you will still get honorable kills even when you don’t use real weapons but whack others with a fishing pole, which at the time didn’t give you any weapon skill. Noor’s proof was in the lack of skill in weaponry, which today doesn’t exist any longer. As we shall see later, there are new ways of being a pacifist and being able to prove it.

It sounds like the worst stereotype of a bad player, but it isn’t. Especially not when you consider that this challenge was carried out during the Burning Crusade and that Gweryc did reach level 70 in the end, without ever using a ranged weapon.

He has also off-tanked Karazhan, joined a raid in Black Temple killing the first three bosses (this time as dps) and done battlegrounds, still without using a ranged weapon. Like Jumba, he pushed his nerfed character as far as he could go, putting the concept of the melee hunter to the test.

Gweryc exemplifies not just that it can be done, but also how it can be done and provides on his blog “Out of Range” a lot of numbers and calculations around Gweryc’s gear, stats, everything you would want to know about this niche of hunter playstyle. It’s a funny hypothetical scenario to think of, and most of us would never dream of actually carrying it out, yet Gweryc pushed this from the fantasy into the reality and it’s a noteworthy experiment indeed.

“While it’s largely blather in the vein of a frightened goose honking at something it doesn’t understand, I concede that there’s a valid challenge to my logic in there. Was Mongoose the wrong way to go for an enchant on my Felsteel Reaper?”

And then he goes on with great enthusiasm to discuss choices and options with regards to gear and enchants. Even though Gweryc was self-nerfed, he still had a penchant for theorycrafting around the obvious obstacle of fighting as melee.

I gave her the postfix “The Gatherer” and with the way Everbloom leveled, she surely deserves that title.

Now that you can get experience from gathering materials, Everbloom the resto druid did just that and continued until she hit level 85. This of course includes exploration as an xp source as well, and if done flawlessly will grant you a statistics page with 0 quests completed and if you’re also a pacifist, 0 killed mobs. Everbloom died 25 times in the process, but if you’re stellar and have a good connection, you could make that a 0 as well. Someone is in fact working on that feat right now! – Maedra is up next.

I was alerted in the comments about a player who did in fact play under the rule of permadeath (permanent death). It simply means that when your character dies, no matter how, then you are not allowed to resurrect and can not resume playing him or her.

It takes nerves of steel to carry this out, and Maedra the gnome warlock, must have plenty, as she is on her fourth incarnation – that’s four times she died, had to reroll and start over again.

“I’ve always been a fan of hardcore mode games, where death is final. It adds an extra edge to a game that is hard to replicate in any other way. I played a lot of Diablo 2, and once I found Hardcore mode, I couldn’t play anything else. Similarly, in Torchlight, I was straight into Hardcore mode. It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, for sure, but I love it.”

Players usually carry out this exercise as it introduces an element of realism, the immediate effect on the gameplay, is a step-up in intensity. You are more likely to think about your choices in the game, as you literally cannot afford to take many chances. Combat, of course, carries the immediate threat of critical loss, which only increases as you reach even higher levels.

As I am writing this, Maedra is level 47 by which time I would have died a few times already. I checked her armory, and yes, 0 deaths it says. How far will she go? You can follow her progress here.

Thriftee is also a more recent leveling experiement, rooted in the linearity and flight heavy land of Cataclysm.

“Thriftee was always an all or nothing guy, and now finds that he cannot bear to part with a single copper – for anything!”

Thriftee and his pet Bear

Thriftee is a dwarf hunter, whose only rule was to not spend any money, this included not accepting gifts from others.

A simple rule with huge consequences, as this meant Thriftee couldn’t train new skills and had to make the best out of the gear he earned as quest rewards. So the trainer was off limits, the auction house included, but also things we normally take for granted, such as riding skill, taking flightpaths or even getting repairs. What Thriftee did utilise, was the talents as they are free and so Thriftee became a beastmaster hunter, despite the irony of having a limited control over his pet Bear.

And now we come to the last bit, a challenge that has similarities with the previous stories, but is still unique. It was concieved recently between several people, where the bloggers Vrykerion and Psynister have both posted about the concept in detail. This one is still in the making and inspired me to dig all of these stories out which dates back to vanilla.

The challenge is to level a character while wearing white or grey items, no enhancers (enchants, glyphs, heirlooms etc), no professions (except first aid), no talents, only training your skills is allowed.

The Ironman Challenge is yet to unfold and a new Cataclysm chapter of the overlooked WoW heroes is about to play out. You can do it too, Vrykerion and Psynister invites everyone, who wants to try out this kind of gameplay, to join them.

Being Unconventional can have Backlashes

As I mentioned earlier, some people don’t see neither the point nor the entertainment in these adventures. All of the players I’ve featured above (I’m not sure about Everbloom though) have been verbally attacked, called stupid and clueless. Gweryc’s in-game mail is a pretty good example and he, problably due to his raid and battleground activity and flirt with a notorious stereotype, had a lot of anger directed towards him, so much that WoW Insider featured him again, but this time in what they called “The Non-Conformity Backlash.

The article is an interview with Gweryc, where he goes indepth with design issues, player motivations and the animosity towards himself and Noor:

“I think the really violent reactions come from highly competitive players who can’t reconcile themselves to the idea that I am, in essence, playing a different game than they are. They mistake my own meta-game of optimizing Hunter melee for fun as a serious effort at excelling as a melee Hunter on their own ambitious turf.”

Maedra states the same philosophy behind her challenge:

“I’m not doing this for the prestige (if such a thing exists for playing a game in an unintended way) but rather for the enjoyment.”

Thriftee (the player who’s also behind Döra the lvl 1 explorer) has also had some belittlement thrown her way, and reading about Gweryc helped her understand the opposition as she wrote her reflections on the topic in a post she called “Odd Bods“.

I have not received any hatred yet with my own nerfed hunter project, but I am expecting it to happen one day, especially as I have just put on a low level pair of intellect pants (for the looks, not the stats!) But to others my gear must look utterly ridiculous, so I consider this a matter of time.

If you plan on participating in the Ironman Challenge, just remember that not everyone “gets it” and some players will tell you that you’re the one not getting it. Do remember that playing unconventionally and nerfed are completely valid playstyles.

If you’re having fun leveling, however you do it, you’re doing it right!

Share

Like this:

Just wanted to correct on ya something about the Ironman Challenge: Training is fine. Just no spending talent points/taking a spec at 10.

Other than that, thanks for the plug! I’m biting my nails at what people vote for me to play! Currently it looks like a Forsaken Shaman. So, that should be difficult to do right there! Huzzah! Already challenging!

Hey Vrykerion
I went back and checked and I did mention that training skills was allowed. Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough, I didn’t want to put down your list of rules here as it’s better if people go to your site, the source, instead.
And yeah, forsaken shaman, haha, you’ll definitely make the news if you can pull that one off!

That’s a great collection of stories and experiments. Thank you for sharing those (I’d only known of 2 of them!), as well as sharing ours.

I’ve considered a pacifist for a while, so I might have to do that soon as well. The melee hunter sounds like a fun project as well. I know I’ve thrown some facepalms at melee hunters in the past, so it would be interesting to take it on intentionally and see how it actually works out.

Well Ironyca – you certainly gave me another interesting evening. What a great post – was so nice to see a piece like this collating so many of my hero’s and so touching that you put me right up there with them. Thank you. From this post you have had me running all over the web especially in relation to the upcoming Ironman challenge! What fun! Two more bloggers to add to my ever expanding blog roll – Haha.

I’ve gleaned that Joy is still doing ok, but still dying to know how she is doing in a bit more detail. I hope she is bringing you joy – although I suspect she is not having much trouble yet – I had very few problems till I hit Outland – which really surprised me tbh.

Great read – thanks again – I even sent my son a link to this (he’s only in the next room lol) because I was so amazed at what you wrote here and the depth of your research into all these great players. :D He came straight back into my room after reading and said “Wow what a great post Mum!” – high praise indeed from my very discerning 24 yr old. :D

A combination of unsung heroes of levelling and challenges posts have inspired me – especially Everbloom which is what I’m going for! Thanks for linking the really fascinating articles – which I shall turn to whenever I have moments of ‘why am I doing this??!!’

HeHe the cats out of the bag for Maedra then thanks to Tomeoftheancient. I was going to mention him, but thought I should ask him first and it was early hours when I found this. I did tell him to get over here via a paranoid forum post though – I’ve been hoping he would comment, as he is doing a ‘no-deaths’ challenge with a very interesting twist – just to make it that much more hard for himself – lol :).

The first time he died we got very upset for him – but kudos to him he rerolled! I couldn’t do that kind of challenge that’s for sure.

Whaddayaknow, someone IS in fact doing a no-deaths challenge!
I would seriously cry if I got killed even before halfway, I would never have the nerves to do this. I’ll have to write Maedra in somewhere, even though his challenge is still ongoing.

Edit: Done, Maedra got her (I called him a her, as the character is female) own little section.

Yea sorrry, my fault – I have the unfortunate habit of calling chars him’s when they are her’s – but he is a bloke, and Maedra is a female char – so I suppose I can be forgiven. Seriously we need a third gender word just for Wow avatars – lol

I’ve told Maedra to take a look over here :) Very nice of you to add him – I think his challenge is awesome – one of the most difficult I have ever heard of, simply because it’s not just no deaths – he/she is gimped in so many other ways too. I could not do this if you paid me :)

Well, I must say that I was surprised when Dora told me that somebody had blogged about my challenge! Thank you very much for including me amongst a few of the people that have inspired me to start and stick with this challenge.

I’ve set up a little blog to tell people about Maedra’s adventures. You can find it at:

I’m happy I learned about your challenge as my original post included the question as to whether someone was actually doing this, so I’m thrilled to have learned about you.
I’ve also updated the link accordingly.

A few of the other commenters did say you were a guy, I used “she” as I wanted a consistency in how I talked about the various players and just went with the character gender. It’s a little funny, cause yeah, it turned you into a she, as with Noor who’s also a man, and Thriftee became a he.

There’s actually a second wave of Ironmanning going on right now with permadeath for increased difficulty, in case you’re interested or even inspired ;)
Here’s the WoW forum Thread and here’s the forum link to where the participants are keeping each other updated and discussing the challenge.

I loved the idea of messing with the game like this, I have been playing a Barbarian (basically a DPS Warrior , but the best armour I am allowed to wear is leather) for a while now but other player seem to get the hump that I am not enclosed in a tin can .

I know this is an old post, but I just found it now and tbh it is the first time I come across such concept. I simply loved it and really have to congratulate all those players who are brave enough to try something different :) As a WoW player, I’m always looking for alternative playing styles and this post just gave me a lot of ideas. It is just brilliant, so thank you very much for sharing :)